Hall of Fame Decides Who Rocks, Officially

In the beginning, it was obvious who should be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Ray Charles, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Little Richard, James Brown, Bob Dylan: All were giants whose selection no one could quarrel with.

But after 30 years of pop music splintering into ever more genres, the choices are no longer so evident, a situation that has led to an increasingly intense generational and stylistic debate about the selections and the process. At the same time, a longstanding aesthetic argument about the relative weight of popularity versus musical excellence also seems to be deepening. In both cases, the issue is basically this: Is there a canon, and if so, who belongs to it, and who gets to decide?

This year’s class, which is to be inducted at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn on Thursday, embodies all of those controversies. After years of rejection, the 1970s glam rock band Kiss, derided by its many critics as schlockmeisters but with a large and passionate fan base known as the Kiss Army, is finally getting in. So are Nirvana — on its first try — as well as Peter Gabriel, Linda Ronstadt, Cat Stevens and Hall & Oates.

But the rap pioneers N.W.A. were passed over, an omission that led to a barrage of complaints from younger critics and hip-hop fans. Also overlooked was the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, which was one of the most influential American groups of the 1960s despite never having been awarded one of the gold records that are the hallmarks of commercial success.

By design, the selection process for the Hall of Fame, which is in Cleveland, aims to be opaque as a way to avoid the kind of lobbying that has overtaken the Oscars. But in interviews, those involved in the deliberations, including a half-dozen members of the nominating committee, provided rare glimpses into the process.

“Unlike the Baseball Hall of Fame, we are not dealing primarily with statistical criteria,” Jon Landau, chairman of the nominating committee, said in what he called his most detailed interview about its deliberations. “It’s not how many tickets or records you sold or Grammys you won. We realize we are into a very subjective area, that we are trying to recognize musical quality and excellence and that different people naturally have different ideas.”

Membership in the Hall is primarily a matter of prestige, with performers becoming eligible 25 years after their first commercial release. But induction often leads to an uptick in record sales, can revive a moribund career and has in some instances encouraged bands to reunite and tour again.

Inductees are chosen in a two-step process that begins in September, when the nominating committee of about 35 members, composed of critics, musicians, record label executives and managers, meets in a conference room at the headquarters of Rolling Stone magazine in New York.

After a dozen or so nominees are chosen, their names are submitted to a larger group of more than 600 voters, who include previous Hall of Fame inductees and a mix of music industry figures and critics. Voters receive an advocacy sheet for each nominee, are supplied a link that allows them to listen to tracks that are meant to exemplify the candidate’s work, and then they cast their ballots, with the top five or six vote getters emerging as honorees.

But some members of the nominating committee talk of a growing disconnect between their body and the larger one. Candidates they have endorsed with great enthusiasm don’t get into the Hall, while others who barely made the initial cut sail right in.

“There’s a very basic split to begin with between us and the voting membership, not to mention the public,” one member of the nominating committee said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of rules discouraging public discussion. “Maybe it’s self-serving, but I think we are more open-minded and avant-garde than the voting membership, which tends to be more conservative or at least mainstream” in its taste.

In recent years, the Hall of Fame Foundation, which runs the proceedings, has sought to bring more diversity to the nominating committee while keeping the numbers at a manageable size. Younger people have been invited to join, and the number of nonwhite and female members has also grown: Among those recently added to the nominating committee are the musicians Tom Morello, 39, of Rage Against the Machine, and Questlove, 43, of the Roots, both of whom argued strongly in favor of Kiss’s induction, according to other members of the committee. The larger voting body has also been made more diverse: One vote is even given to fans, the result of an online poll.

Another recent innovation has been the creation of special subcommittees to examine and advocate for specific genres that the Hall has often been accused of slighting. Hip-hop falls into that category, as do progressive rock and heavy metal.

“We needed to deepen our bench,” said Mr. Landau, a former critic who manages Bruce Springsteen. “We are now moving into a period in which music got more nichified and genres got distinct from each other. Nobody is an expert in all of it. We need to make sure we have people who can speak with depth and knowledge about various genres and pieces of the puzzle.”

Even with his own band finally being inducted, Gene Simmons, Kiss’s frontman, could not resist taking a dig at the selection process and reviving another old debate. In a radio interview last month, he argued that neither hip-hop acts nor dance music performers like Donna Summer and Madonna should be in the Hall.

“If you don’t play guitar and you don’t write your own songs, you don’t belong there,” he said. He added: “You’ve got Grandmaster Flash in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? Run-D.M.C. in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? You’re killing me. That doesn’t mean they aren’t good artists. But they don’t play guitar. They sample, and they talk. Not even sing.”

But the nominating committee has been specifically instructed to take the broadest possible view of what rock ’n’ and roll is. “The nature of this music is its hybrid form, so we decided to be inclusive,” said Jann Wenner, a founder of Rolling Stone magazine and, along with Ahmet Ertegun, a founder of Atlantic Records, a driving force behind the creation of the Hall. “Rock and roll has always thrived on being a great river with all these tributaries flowing into it, whether country rock, acid, dance music or hip-hop.”

Because of the broad definition of what constitutes rock ’n’ roll and the limited number of slots available annually, some mainstream acts continue to wait in the wings, to the annoyance of some committee members. In interviews, several mentioned names like Gram Parsons, Roxy Music, the Meters, Brian Eno, Procol Harum and Kraftwerk. “I find the process frustrating, because the nozzle is so small,” one of them said.

Over the next few years, that logjam will only grow, which means that debate is likely to intensify. Nine Inch Nails, Green Day, Phish, Pavement, Queen Latifah and Garth Brooks, among others, become eligible this year, and in 2015, Blur, the Black Crowes, A Tribe Called Quest, Mariah Carey, Hole, Moby and Smashing Pumpkins will also join the list.

Down the line, rap performers are likely to benefit from the addition of more knowledgeable and sympathetic members on the selection committees, a development that should soothe their aggrieved fans but irritate fans of older rock groups. Also, because of the 25-year eligibility requirement, said Joel Peresman, president of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation, “hip-hop is relatively new to us, and some artists will age in as they become eligible.”

A hip-hop advocate on the nominating committee endorsed this assessment, saying: “Some of our guys are getting in. We’re in the game, we’re in the debate.”

Mr. Peresman continued, “We’re trying to make this the most democratic process possible in an art form that is very personal to a lot of people.” He added, “This is not Newtonian physics. It’s not like every action has an equal and opposite reaction. This is an emotional and sometimes unquantifiable thing.”

Correction:

A picture caption on Thursday with an article about the debate over who is inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame referred incorrectly to Fab 5 Freddy in some editions. He was not a member of the group N.W.A., which was passed over for induction this year.

Correction:

A correction in this space on Saturday for a picture caption with an article about who is inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame referred incorrectly to Fab 5 Freddy. While he has performed rap, he is an artist and filmmaker, not a rapper.